World of WarCraft Open Beta Date Set?

[Burning_Samurai]

http://www.blizzard.com/insider/insider-020.html

Discuss my childern.

[Cedil]

If all the raid bosses are going to require 40 players of 60th level, how are you going to ramp up the challenge from lower-tier raid bosses to higher-tier ones?

This is fairly easy to do because of the power of armor, equipment, and other gear. Equipment makes a huge difference in our game. We can also tune the difficulty of creatures. We can make it so that the lower-tier raid boss is difficult, but once you learn the strategy, you can beat it quite easily.

One of the most powerful things a raid group can possess is knowledge. That's why we're trying to keep so much of the raid game confidential. We don't want to put a lot of this type of content in the beta, because the number one advantage you can have going into a raid is the strategy for beating it. We know that the first time people take on a raid encounter, they are going to wipe out and think it is very, very difficult. People will feel we've made it too hard, and that's with 40 people in the encounter. But a couple of weeks, if not a week, later that same group is going to be beating that raid boss with 30 people, and then 20 people by the time they ramp up in gear and discover the correct strategy.

That actually happens in every dungeon - not just the raid areas. I added Blackrock Depths to the current beta a while ago, and the testers went nuts. They said "This is the hardest dungeon ever. I can't believe how hard this is tuned. This is impossible. There is no way it can be done with a group of five."

So I posted on the forums and said, "Let me know how you feel about it in a week." Sure enough, a week later, groups of five were beating it. And now it's attacked regularly and beaten pretty easily. They'll figure it out, and I think knowledge is the best advantage that they can have. Plus, we can make higher-tiers harder just by playing with the numbers, and then players will have to ramp up in gear and resists to beat these higher challenges.

My personal favourite part.

There is high end content we don't know about it. LOTS of it.

And the best part is instead of the retards at SoE, we have the genius at blizzard designing it.

[Algol Devilstar]

Originally posted by Burning_Samurai
Discuss my childern.

haha, discuss your childern?

[Tuco]

We know that the first time people take on a raid encounter, they are going to wipe out and think it is very, very difficult.

They had better have this.

I won't be happy unless the top end guilds are beating their heads against a wall and have to gear up at the current level to beat the next one, midway through the end-game.

[DiscW]

It's about time someone expanded upon the best parts of the Velious expansion.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by DiscW
It's about time someone expanded upon the best parts of the Velious expansion.

This has been pretty much the beaten drum for a while, and precisely what a lot of people including myself predicted/hoped would come out of Tigole. Now, it is the middle of the night, so it may be hours before someone tells us that it's not there because it doesn't exist/isn't tuned/itemized/tested, etc. Ignoring the fact that they have said for no less than six months, if not more, that raid content will be very limited in Beta, we can all take the safe route and assume that it really doesn't exist until we see it...and if we do see it, we can assume that the last parts of the endgame are going to be mad fucked-up and cockblocking will resume any time now...and if people make it all the way through the end game, hopefully having taken a few months, without cockblocking or bullshit, and it is enjoyable, we can start assuming that lightning can't strike twice and the first expansion is going to fast-forward us to Luclin. That's the safe route.

But I'll go ahead and think happy thoughts, if it's all the same to everyone else.

[Fulorian]

That actually happens in every dungeon - not just the raid areas. I added Blackrock Depths to the current beta a while ago, and the testers went nuts. They said "This is the hardest dungeon ever. I can't believe how hard this is tuned. This is impossible. There is no way it can be done with a group of five."

So I posted on the forums and said, "Let me know how you feel about it in a week." Sure enough, a week later, groups of five were beating it. And now it's attacked regularly and beaten pretty easily. They'll figure it out, and I think knowledge is the best advantage that they can have. Plus, we can make higher-tiers harder just by playing with the numbers, and then players will have to ramp up in gear and resists to beat these higher challenges.

What I find funny is that we were beating it with 5 - 6 within a day or two of PvP server screaming about it being insane with 10 and absurdly impossible with 5.

[Remfin]

And the best part is instead of the retards at SoE, we have the genius at blizzard designing it.

They listed right there what their fallback plan is - when in doubt, makes things hit harder. Once creativity runs out it's going to be the same shit. Blizzard has far more creativity but I think eventually the well will run dry, and then what are you gonna say?

[Tripamang]

Ooo.. lets keep up a long running argument wholly based around speculation with no clear winner and made up entirely of opinions!

=(

Raids sounds good...

[Vaclav]

Starting raids off with a 40 man target initially is a huge mistake - its painful on guilds if they ever scale it back, and thats dangerously close to "autoattack and AFK" numbers.....

I was expecting them to be 25-30 to start, I'm really disappointed.

[Jait]

Originally posted by Vaclav
Starting raids off with a 40 man target initially is a huge mistake - its painful on guilds if they ever scale it back, and thats dangerously close to "autoattack and AFK" numbers.....

I was expecting them to be 25-30 to start, I'm really disappointed.

Long live Foozle.

Again, they're mimicing EQ1. Dump a single mob in the game that requires 2-3 times the numbers of any other encounter in the game. Just like Guk and Sol, you will need multiple groups to do the big dungeon encounters but far more for the Boss. Just like Nag and Vox, you will need to zerg, or have a Guild much larger than the game can comfortably support.

You just have to assume they're going to be putting more and more content like this in the game after release. Otherwise it makes very little sense and is exactly the cockblock SOE likes to pull.

As for innovation, what do you expect? You can add AEs, addtional spawns, up the damage. Honestly I'm not sure what people expect. There's only so many avenues to beefing up encounter difficulty within the rules of the game engine.


Oh, as for the worst MMORPG business decision of the day?

This takes this cake

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Originally posted by Vaclav
Starting raids off with a 40 man target initially is a huge mistake - its painful on guilds if they ever scale it back, and thats dangerously close to "autoattack and AFK" numbers.....

I was expecting them to be 25-30 to start, I'm really disappointed.

How can you honestly act disappointed about some aspect of a game you clearly favor EQ2 over? Drop the "concerned gamer" act Vaclav, you're worse than I am for fuck's sake.

Did they announce the number of people Onyxia is targeted for, BTW? I think I missed it.

[Edit] I could hardly go without mentioning that the concept that 40 people = Autoattack and AFK in WoW is amazingly laughable. If they are testing the content with...you know, players with a pulse? There is nothing you can do that requires either pressing the same button every ten seconds or "hitting autoattack and going AFK" for any class that will bring you to even 50% efficiency. Hell, either one of those will almost assuredly leave you doing nothing very quickly under most group scenarios with most classes. If Vaclav has played the game, he knows this, but on we go, nonetheless.

[findar]

what made me smile, and, maybe im the only one that likes this idea, is how they are doing loot.

they never specify how much loot will drop(expected), but they do say that you can choose to keep the item or forge it into components for the items u will need to beat tougher raids.

fucking brilliant.

recycling all the shit from low ends to get to high ends, i heart it.

Our raid loot will have a unique look too. When they see Onyxia loot, they'll know that you killed the dragon. Obviously the loot has to scale with the difficulty of the encounter, so raid bosses that are lower-tiered will still give good loot, but not nearly as good as that from higher-tiered bosses. Despite this, even the lowest-tier raid bosses will give better loot than a typical dungeon boss, even a level 60 one.

Most dungeon bosses drop at the most two items. We haven't nailed down exactly how much loot a raid boss will drop, but we want the loot table to be very deep; not only in the number of items that drop, but also in terms of what those items will be. She is also going to drop loot that is necessary to beat a higher-tiered raid boss, but that loot can also be fashioned into some of the best equipment in the game. So players will have to make a decision: do they want to equip themselves to take down the next raid boss or do they want this really cool item? And because we are instancing her, many raid groups will be able to face this choice, and keep raiding her. In addition to that, we'll put very deep loot tables on the rest of the monsters in her raid instance, as well.

[Vaclav]

Originally posted by FoghornDeadhorn
How can you honestly act disappointed about some aspect of a game you clearly favor EQ2 over? Drop the "concerned gamer" act Vaclav, you're worse than I am for fuck's sake.

I guess you missed the part where I've decided to buy both, right?

It's not going to be my primary game in how everything is currently looking, but I'm definitely going to play it some. (kinda like how alot of people are planning to play Guild Wars to goof around with it a little while playing WoW primary)

40 man targets from day one make me more confident in my "secondary game" category placement.

I could hardly go without mentioning that the concept that 40 people = Autoattack and AFK in WoW is amazingly laughable. If they are testing the content with...you know, players with a pulse? There is nothing you can do that requires either pressing the same button every ten seconds or "hitting autoattack and going AFK" for any class that will bring you to even 50% efficiency. Hell, either one of those will almost assuredly leave you doing nothing very quickly under most group scenarios with most classes. If Vaclav has played the game, he knows this, but on we go, nonetheless.

I realize that, that was the point, once you start hitting those magic 40+ numbers people have been able to go AFK, be partially efficient and guilds still win encounters in other games - its disappointing. It's not hard to see how the potential for inattentive members to not punish a guild when 40 are needed vs. 25-30 range - 2.5% vs. 3.3-4% of the encounter needs to be carried per person....

I honestly got bored and disinterested in EQ much quicker when our guild was "strong" fielding 50+ people regularly vs. "struggling" and fielding only 20-30 for a little history.

And findar, you're not the only one who thought that idea was a good one. (since MOST will be instanced - noninstanced I'd consider it a horrifying concept though)

[findar]

And findar, you're not the only one who thought that idea was a good one. (since MOST will be instanced - noninstanced I'd consider it a horrifying concept though)

well. noninstanced is funny and it really hasnt been explained yet. the idea behind the noninstanced raids is cool(giving benefits to everyone in the long run, uber guilds short run) but im not really sure how itll work(i read it on paper, execution is always different). wouldnt be surprised to see that whatever is needed for non-instanced raids also has a counterpart in instanced raids... like there is MEGAMAGMAGOD_01(non-nstanced, tier3) that guards fields of fire, or some shit, and is non-instanced... but there is KINGOFFLAMES(instanced, tier2) in the temple of fire or something and a GODOFTHUNDER(instanced, tier2) in cloud land, and the noninstanced takes parts of those 2 so you have to use a combo of gear.

makes it a lot easier to make noninstanced events harder.